I'm quite pleased to announce that the efforts of Dan Diephouse to get the Codehaus turned into a bonafide non-profit organisation has produced results. Now we are just awaiting certification from the IRS for our tax-exempt status. Paul Brown is our Director of Altruism, and will be coordinating our fund-raising activities. As always, I'm just the smiling face on the front of the cereal box.

Today I had the good fortune to shoot the breeze with Mike Loukides at O'Reilly. He's working on a new model at O'Reilly, doing less expensive, smaller, and more up-to-date PDF publishing. I think this is an excellent idea. The 37signals guys have certainly done well with their PDF publishing, and you simply can't argue about the cost reduction. Similar to how with web 2.0 someone can quickly and cheaply produce a new thing, reducing the risk of the effort, a publishing 2.0 model likewise can harness the, um, long tail (man, I feel dirty just saying it).

So, if you've got the price of a pair of lattes, and the need for some information you probably won't find in a dead-tree book, surf on over to O'Reilly's new PDF library and take a gander.

Of course, I still print stuff out so I can read it while lounging where-ever I care to lounge.

I've recently started using iTunes on the G5 hooked to the speakers, instead of the iPod connected to them. Today I realized that I hadn't been listening to anything at all, because iTunes simply never made it to the front of my stack of windows. With the physical iPod situated in front of me, I'm more apt to pick something to listen to.

Digital isn't always better. Sometimes a big-ass knob on a distinct device is functionally better than a whizzy-bang brushed metal UI without a dedicated knob.

Yes, I know the iPod doesn't have a knob. It has an iKnob (aka, the clickwheel with the nipple in the middle). But it's knobesque nonetheless. And the screen is always visible. No repeated command-tab to find it. It's just right there. On the desk.

This is Velcro.

She was the oldest of the 6 cats who reside in our house. About 6 years ago, we almost lost her to infection and kidney stones. She managed to pull through quite well. This week, she took a downturn. Collapsed lung. A mass near her liver. This morning, while Rebecca was driving her from one veterinarian office to another (which had a better ultrasound), Velcro took her last breath. Velcro, we love you and miss you dearly.

• Flew to JBossWorld conference in Vegas
• Lost $200 on slots
• Wife won $240 on slots
• Went to a party at the top of the world (with go-go dancers, see photos)
• Hung out with Thomas Diesler, Mark Proctor, and Tom Bayeans. (Belgian farmboys are funny when drunk)
• Helped present a Drools/JBoss Rules BoF
• Saw Penn Teller
• Flew home
• Got food poisoning (Recovering, mostly complete)

Don't forget kids, next week I'll be at that JBoss conference, where I'll be pitching in on the JBoss Rules BOF, in Vegas, with that vegetarian Mark Proctor. And remember Mark, nobody likes a vegetarian. Though, maybe we like you a little bit for kicking ass and getting Drools 3.0 out the door. Rock on, you little British man, rock on!

Last night at the Best Buy, I picked up Phish's NYE'95 show, which is quite a nice 3-disc set. As my attorney says, wouldn't it be great if every show was like a New Year's Eve show? While listening to it, I started surfing and found a nice tidbit about a show with Phil Lesh Friends in Asheville. Mike of Phish will be there along with the recently-blogged Benevento/Russo Duo. That's awesome.

I pinged my attorney, and his wife is letting him out of the house for a jamband road trip up to Asheville. I remember the days of it being difficult to get Dead tickets (though, I've been close enough to see Jerry sweating all over his guitar) so was quite pleased to find tickets still availlable for this Asheville show. Alas, through Ticketmaster. But after being suitably brutalized by their "service fees", I've got 2 tickets en-route.

(And yes, referring to my school buddy as "my attorney" is an affectation and reference to Hunter S. Thompson.)

I take random photos with the shoephone.

My wife paints

Through the kick-ass efforts of Ben Walding (pictured left with his, um, jaffles iron...) and major assists by Contegix, sanity has started to return to the haus. All repositories are capable of being open for business, pending the project despots decision. So, if CVS/Subversion is missing, go bug the project lead.

We've got all project mail flowing again, with a new web-based management piece for subscribing and unsubscribing. While the downtime sucked more than most things can suck, we're coming back with better tooling and infrastructure. This is mostly the result of not being willing to reconfigure all of our projects by hand. So we've scripted the heck out of things.

We're still working on personal and project webspace. Previous sites should be up, except those using plain HTML. Any Confluence-backed site is good to go. All projects are currently restricted from producing new distributions on dist.codehaus.org, but we're quickly working towards a solution for that. Pretty soon the front codehaus.org page will return to its normally scheduled programming.

Plus, we've got a new logo. Everything goes better with a new logo.

How much have you got? (Click to enlarge)